# Vassily Dmitritch — The Death of Ivan Ilyich and Other Stories character guide

> Vassily Dmitritch in The Death of Ivan Ilyich and Other Stories by Leo Tolstoy.

**Role:** supporting

**Also known as:** Vassily

**First appearance:** 0012-family-happiness

## Snapshot

A husband whose presence in Márya's life raises the question of whether affection can survive the slow erosion of ordinary days.

## Who they are

Vassily Dmitritch belongs to the world of settled marriages and country routines, a man whose steadiness is both his virtue and his limitation. Where Márya craves intensity and meaning, he offers the reliable comfort of a life without surprises, and the gap between them becomes the quiet battlefield of the story. His inability to see what she needs, and her inability to stop needing it, turns their union into a study of how two people can love each other and still miss each other entirely.

## In the story

### [Strawberries](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/leo_tolstoy_short_fiction_se/chapters/strawberries)

Referred to as 'Vólya', the twelve-year-old son of Nicholas Semyónovitch and Marie. He buys strawberries from the peasant girls with money from his nurse after his mother refuses them.

## Links

- HTML: https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/leo_tolstoy_short_fiction_se/characters/vassily_dmitritch
- Book: https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/leo_tolstoy_short_fiction_se
- All characters: https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/leo_tolstoy_short_fiction_se/characters